21 January (Part 1) - Just ask a busy woman
Tory councillors did nothing effective about the Abbey Wood eyesore for
more than five years. Their Labour counterparts secured nothing but empty
promises following their election in May 2014.
Meanwhile the land owner went broke, the administrators didn’t want to spend any
money and Bexley council happily ignored
the bad publicity
while making up lame excuses about the weather, the vandals and difficulties of enforcing any legal
notice. Who assumed the site owner wouldn’t comply without a court order?
The local MP, Teresa Pearce, was always supportive of her constituents but the
practical effects remained at zero, until, I can only assume, she decided she
had seen too much inactivity and demanded a meeting with Bexley’s Deputy
Director of Public Protection. (Is that a stupid title or what?)
Readers who complain that Bexley council doesn’t reply to emails or answer the
phone or if they do, don’t return calls, may be interested to know that being an
MP does not improve matters. Eventually Bexley offered Teresa a date for
yesterday morning. A day they should have known that a member of the Treasury
Select Committee was due to meet the Chancellor at one of their regular
meetings. Maybe I have a suspicious mind.
However it was George Osborne who got the apology and David Bryce-Smith who got the
unwelcome guest. Constituents come first.
The meeting must have gone reasonably well. From a variety of sources I
understand that the Bonkers photos weren’t good enough for Bexley council and a
man was sent out at your expense to take their own photographs and that
instructions have gone out to clean up the site and get rid of all the trip hazards which surround it.
An
early morning excursion suggests this must be true. A big skip has appeared in the middle of the site.
Meanwhile another local MP is on the warpath on behalf of his constituents.
James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) has been threatening Southeastern
Trains that “their
franchise is on borrowed time” if the company doesn’t improve its performance. He's got himself
into the News Shopper too. But it’s all hot air. He seems not to know that his government
extended the SET franchise to 2018 only a few months ago.
Speaking
of the News Shopper. If you get hold of today’s Bexley issue you will
see the front page is by Tim McFarlan. It’s a name you won’t see in the News
Shopper any more because today is his last day there. He is off to the Daily Mail on line. So good luck to him.
Tim was the only NS reporter who ever bothered to show up at a council meeting
since Linda Piper left some years ago. She used to go to them all. As far as I could tell, all
other NS reports on Bexley council were regurgitated copies of Bexley’s press
releases and you know how honest they are likely to be.